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1. Yogurt is easier to digest than milk. Many people who cannot tolerate milk, either because of a protein allergy or lactose intolerance, can enjoy yogurt. The culturing process makes yogurt more digestible than milk. The live active cultures create lactase, the enzyme lactose-intolerant people lack, and another enzyme contained in some yogurts (beta-galactosidase) also helps improve lactose absorption in lactase-deficient persons. Bacterial enzymes created by the culturing process, partially digest the milk protein casein, making it easier to absorb and less allergenic. In our pediatric practice, we have observed that children who cannot tolerate milk can often eat yogurt without any intestinal upset. While the amount varies among brands of yogurt, in general, yogurt has less lactose than milk. The culturing process has already broken down the milk sugar lactose into glucose and galactose, two sugars that are easily absorbed by lactose-intolerant persons.

2. Yogurt contributes to colon health. There’s a medical truism that states: “You’re only as healthy as your colon.” When eating yogurt, you care for your colon in two ways. First, yogurt contains lactobacteria, intestines-friendly bacterial cultures that foster a healthy colon, and even lower the risk of colon cancer. Lactobacteria, especially acidophilus, promotes the growth of healthy bacteria in the colon and reduces the conversion of bile into carcinogenic bile acids. The more of these intestines-friendly bacteria that are present in your colon, the lower the chance of colon diseases. Basically, the friendly bacteria in yogurt seems to deactivate harmful substances (such as nitrates and nitrites before they are converted to nitrosamines) before they can become carcinogenic.

Secondly, yogurt is a rich source of calcium – a mineral that contributes to colon health and decreases the risk of colon cancer. Calcium discourages excess growth of the cells lining the colon, which can place a person at high risk for colon cancer. Calcium also binds cancer-producing bile acids and keeps them from irritating the colon wall. People that have diets high in calcium (e.g. Scandinavian countries) have lower rates of colorectal cancer. One study showed that an average intake of 1,200 milligrams of calcium a day is associated with a 75 percent reduction of colorectal cancer. As a survivor of colon cancer, I have a critical interest in the care of my colon. My life depends on it.

3. Yogurt improves the bioavailability of other nutrients. Culturing of yogurt increases the absorption of calcium and B-vitamins. The lactic acid in the yogurt aids in the digestion of the milk calcium, making it easier to absorb.

4. Yogurt can boost immunity. Researchers who studied 68 people who ate two cups of live-culture yogurt daily for three months found that these persons produced higher levels of immunity boosting interferon. The bacterial cultures in yogurt have also been shown to stimulate infection-fighting white cells in the bloodstream. Some studies have shown yogurt cultures to contain a factor that has anti-tumor effects in experimental animals.

NUTRITIP: Yogurt – Good for Young and Old

Yogurt is a valuable health food for both infants and elderly persons. For children, it is a balanced source of protein, fats, carbohydrates, and minerals in a texture that kids love. For senior citizens, who usually have more sensitive colons or whose intestines have run out of lactase, yogurt is also a valuable food. Elderly intestines showed declining levels of bifidus bacteria, which allow the growth of toxin-producing and, perhaps, cancer-causing bacteria.

5. Yogurt aids healing after intestinal infections. Some viral and allergic gastrointestinal disorders injure the lining of the intestines, especially the cells that produce lactase. This results in temporary lactose malabsorption problems. This is why children often cannot tolerate milk for a month or two after an intestinal infection. Yogurt, however, because it contains less lactose and more lactase, is usually well-tolerated by healing intestines and is a popular “healing food” for diarrhea. Many pediatricians recommend yogurt for children suffering from various forms of indigestion. Research shows that children recover faster from diarrhea when eating yogurt. It’s good to eat yogurt while taking antibiotics. The yogurt will minimize the effects of the antibiotic on the friendly bacteria in the intestines.

NUTRITIP: A Chaser for Antibiotics

Antibiotics kill not only harmful bacteria; they also kill the healthy ones in the intestines. The live bacterial cultures in yogurt can help replenish the intestines with helpful bacteria before the harmful ones take over. I usually “prescribe” a daily dose of yogurt while a person is taking antibiotics and for two weeks thereafter.

6. Yogurt can decrease yeast infections. Research has shown that eating eight ounces of yogurt that contains live and active cultures daily reduces the amount of yeast colonies in the vagina and decreases the incidence of vaginal yeast infections.

7. Yogurt is a rich source of calcium. An 8-ounce serving of most yogurts provides 450 mg. of calcium, one-half of a child’s RDA and 30 to 40 percent of the adult RDA for calcium. Because the live-active cultures in yogurt increase the absorption of calcium, an 8-ounce serving of yogurt gets more calcium into the body than the same volume of milk can.

8. Yogurt is an excellent source of protein. Plain yogurt contains around ten to fourteen grams of protein per eight ounces, which amounts to twenty percent of the daily protein requirement for most persons. In fact, eight ounces of yogurt that contains live and active cultures, contains 20 percent more protein than the same volume of milk (10 grams versus 8 grams). Besides being a rich source of proteins, the culturing of the milk proteins during fermentation makes these proteins easier to digest. For this reason, the proteins in yogurt are often called “predigested.”

9. Yogurt can lower cholesterol. There are a few studies that have shown that yogurt can reduce the blood cholesterol. This may be because the live cultures in yogurt can assimilate the cholesterol or because yogurt binds bile acids, (which has also been shown to lower cholesterol), or both.

10. Yogurt is a “grow food.” Two nutritional properties of yogurt may help children with intestinal absorption problems grow: the easier digestibility of the proteins and the fact that the lactic acid in yogurt increases the absorption of minerals. And even most picky-eaters will eat yogurt in dips and smoothies and as a topping.

Perhaps we can take a health tip about yogurt cultures from cultures who consume a lot of yogurt, such as the Bulgarians who are noted for their longer lifespan and remain in good health well into old age.

By far the chief wreckers of our health today are sugars and bad fats. So which are the good ones and which ones are bad? My aim is to enable you to make better food choices for you and your family.

Sugars

Sugars are more than just the white grains you put in your coffee or tea. Sugars are also to be found in the caffeine in coffee, alcohol, honey, fruit juice without the pulp and peeled potatoes. Even the so-called slow sugars, such as whole grains, are still sugars.

We are the descendants of Stone Age men. By an evolutionary twist, this man was a mammal whose liver was not capable of converting sugar into vitamin C (most mammals can, in fact, do this). Thus we need to get our vitamin C from external sources, such as vegetables and fruit. We are not genetically equipped to deal with a whole lot of sugar.

Fast Sugars

One needs to distinguish between fast and slow sugars. Fast sugars are sugars

which are not converted into energy by the liver but into fat instead. These are more or less immediately released into the bloodstream, causing your blood glucose levels to rise. This in turn provokes an insulin response by the pancreas to stabilize your blood sugar by bringing it down. Insulin is also responsible for the conversion of these sugars into fat. Basically your body is in survival mode because excess sugar levels can cause serious health complaints such as high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, candidiasis and other bowel disorders, hypoglycemia, high blood pressure, diabetes, and even cancer, insulin shock and death. It is the job of your pancreas to prevent this from happening.

Western food is, however, loaded with fast sugars, causing a daily panic in our bodies. Since too much insulin in the system can also be sickening and because our body is constantly trying to find a balance, we develop insulin resistance. This causes you to be free of complaints for many years. However, it is a pseudo-balance and it is therefore no coincidence that most people develop complaints and ailments in midlife. As the accumulated damage spans a period of 20 to 30 years, most people will not trace their health problems back to the food they have been consuming all these years. We are currently experiencing an explosion of cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. And these diseases are occurring at an increasingly younger age too!

Diabetes is not called sugar diabetes for nothing. Sugar sickens. Diabetes is nothing more than a used-up, weakened or worn-out pancreas. It has been working overtime for years and is now no longer capable of producing sufficient amounts of insulin to regulate the blood sugar, resulting in pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer or other afflictions of the pancreas. On top of this, insulin resistance causes your body’s insulin to be increasingly less effective. The only way to reverse the process is to eliminate fast sugars in your food.

Start drinking your coffee or tea black (without that dead, ultraheated creamer as well) and don’t eat products containing sugar. Which is kind of a pain because it’s in nearly all our food. Check the ingredients on the label – and that goes for products from health-food stores too. Watch out for glucose, fructose, dextrose, sucrose, invert-sugar syrup, but also ‘natural’ alternatives such as raw cane sugar, corn syrup, rice syrup, date syrup and wheat syrup. Our bodies were not made to process that much sugar, natural or otherwise.

Slow Sugars

Slow sugars are also sugars. They’re in whole-grain products such as brown bread, brown rice, brown pasta, etc. These are called whole grain because the germ, the outer bran as well as the inner starch, are used. Particularly the bran slows down the sugars of the starch. White bread is therefore a fast sugar because the bran has been removed from the grain, leaving only the starch. For that reason, brown bread, brown rice and brown pasta are healthier than their white varieties. It’s the fiber in bran which slows down the sugars, slowing down their release into the bloodstream.

The same happens with potatoes and fruit. Those of you who remove the skin from an apple are refining the apple by throwing away the fiber and leaving only the fruit sugar. Peel a potato and you’re doing the same. Without its skin, a potato is merely a starch bomb and therefore a fast sugar. For this reason, fruit juice without the pulp fiber is nothing more than liquid candy. Nature didn’t intend it this way, otherwise she would have produced apples and potatoes without pulp and fiber. So don’t buy commercial fruit juice from a pack but squeeze your own fruit juice and don’t forget to drink the pulp either. Choose sour and bitter fruits instead of sweet ones, particularly berries, sour apples and citrus fruits such as lemon and grapefruit. Sour and bitter fruits are the original fruits and were eaten by Stone Age men.

Though slow sugars are better than fast sugars, this does not mean you can consume brown bread, rice, pasta and whole sweet fruits unlimitedly! Once again, we were not made to pump large quantities of sugars into our system. Therefore you should eat no more than two slices of bread and have brown pasta or rice only twice a week. So what should you eat instead? A much more complex form of carbohydrates is in vegetables. Try eating a salad a day containing, for example, carrot, green leafy vegetables, alfalfa and sprouts with a dressing of lemon juice and extra virgin coconut oil or olive oil and see how long that keeps you going. I guarantee you will get more energy and feel less hungry. You will also shed those excess pounds fast because you have drastically lowered your sugar intake, reducing your risk of diabetes and making you feel healthier and more vital. Don’t forget that viruses, parasites and cancer cells feed on sugar too.

Honey

Though honey has many healing qualities it should nevertheless be regarded as a fast sugar. Nature made the stuff so darn sweet for a reason – you should eat it only in small quantities. Because of its healthy aspects, honey need not be avoided. Make sure you eat raw honey (available in health-food stores or from local bee keepers), though, and not the highly processed honey supermarkets sell, which has been industrially heated and robbed of all its nutrients. Very often the bees were fed ordinary sugar as well, so this kind of ‘honey’ is nothing more than sugar disguised as honey.

Green Tea

A very special role is reserved for the caffeine in green tea. Just like alcohol,

caffeine is a natural substance which, when used sparingly, can have a healing effect. In coffee, the caffeine is however released at lightning speed, which makes coffee a fast sugar. This is of course why we drink coffee in the morning, to kickstart the brain into action. If you don’t want to give up your coffee, limit yourself to two cups a day.

Drinking green tea is better, though. For reasons yet unknown, there is a substance in green tea which slows down the release of caffeine into the blood, making it a slow sugar and giving you only the health benefits of caffeine. It gets even better: green tea also ‘eats’ the glucose in your blood, helping you to stabilize your blood sugar and supporting the pancreas so it doesn’t have to produce massive amounts of insulin.

Artificial Sweeteners

Please don’t let this be a reason for you to fall into the trap of using artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sorbitol, saccharine and other cancerous chemicals! Teach yourself to avoid sweet foods and enjoy the natural taste of real food instead. People who add cream and sugar to their coffee are really drinking coffee-flavored candy. It’s time we become adults and appreciate all four tastes (sweet, sour, salt and bitter) instead of only two (sweet and salt). If we did this and used all the colors of the rainbow, we would automatically make better food choices. We have been conditioned since we were children toward sweet and salty foods by a powerful food industry and therefore as adults, we often still have the taste of a four year old.

Fats

Our government tells us that unsaturated plant fats are good for us and saturated animal fats aren’t. This is a little too black and white. Here’s the grey area:

Omega-3/6

First off, it’s essential that we look at the omega fatty acids in vegetable and

animal fats. Next to sugars, it’s necessary to reduce your omega-6 intake. Omega-6 is a natural and healthy fatty acid but only at the right ratio to omega-3. We can eat unlimited amounts of omega-3 fats but too many omega-6 fats will inevitably lead to health problems.

The omega-3 to 6 ratio in Paleolithic times was no more than 1:4. What is it today? Anything from 1:20 to a staggering 1:50! Time, therefore, to up your omega-3 intake and lower your omega-6 intake. Eat fewer grains and avoid grain-based oils such as corn oil. Other omega-6 oils which are best avoided are soy oil and sunflower oil. Commercial meat and dairy comes from animals fed grain pellets and therefore also contain too much omega-6. Besides the animals’ suffering and the antibiotics, growth hormones, and the GMO’s they get, this is another reason to choose organic, grass-fed meat and dairy. Cows are supposed to eat grass and clover. So are pigs. Did you know chickens also eat grass?

So where do we get all these omega-3 fats? From anything with a green leaf. Green leafy vegetables are an excellent source of omega-3, particularly when raw. For cooking, also use green veggies, such as kale, sprouts, broccoli, etc. Other vegetable fats containing omega-3 are flaxseed oil and walnut oil. Be careful, though, as these oils do not allow themselves to be heated. Use only extra virgin olive oil for this or use olive oil cold. The best animal source of omega-3 is wild fatty fish and cod-liver or krill oil. These contain the long-chain EPA and DHA omega-3 fats.

Saturated Fats

For years we’ve been hearing that saturated fats are bad because they increase cholesterol levels. This is a persistent myth. In Asian, African and South American countries people cook with butter, coconut oil, and lard all the time and look at the health of these people! Saturated fats can withstand high temperatures and can be used multiple times and are therefore perfectly suited for frying. The best fats for frying are butter, coconut oil and olive oil. Natural saturated fats (animal fats but also plant fats like coconut fat) are processed by the body without difficulty and are not fattening. What makes people fat and unhealthy are sugar and refined oils (trans fats). By all means, help yourself to an organic egg fried in butter, full-fat yogurt or organic grass-fed meat.

Trans Fats

Trans fats are the missing link between unsaturated and saturated fats. It’s not saturated fats which are the enemy but trans fats. Trans fatty acids are formed by solidifying cheaply available unsaturated plant fats like sunflower oil, soy oil, corn oil, peanut oil, etc. Through a heating process, the liquid is extracted from these fats, either in part or whole. Then a hydrogen atom is added. This results in the transformation of unsaturated fatty acids into saturated fatty acids, a kind not found in nature and which is alien to the body. When you consume these fats, your body doesn’t know what to do with them, giving them free range to form free radicals and cause damage even at the cellular (DNA) level!

Which products contain trans fats? It’s better to ask which ones don’t nowadays. Frying oil, potato chips, coffee creamer, cookies – chances are they contain hydrogenated or partly hydrogenated fats. Even peanut butter is no longer exempt. And it isn’t just foods either: make sure you also read the labels of vitamin supplements, ointments, creams, gels, lotions, cosmetics – even the ones you buy in health-food stores. It’s very important that you check the labels for these and other ingredients. You will find empty foods very often also contain sugar, salt, flavour enhancers and chemical sweeteners to hide the fact that they taste like cardboard. Food should be prepared in a kitchen, not in a lab.

Interestingly enough, trans fats are not completely unnatural. Meat and dairy from hoofed grazing animals (ruminants) naturally contains 2 to 3% trans fats. Tests have been done to measure the potential harmful effects of natural and unnatural trans fats. Natural trans fats turned out to be completely harmless, whereas chemical trans fats did prove harmful to natural organisms, even though they looked identical under the microscope. Nobody knows why this is. My guess is other micronutrients play a role in cancelling the potentially harmful effects of natural trans fats in, for example, butter. We see the same mechanism at work with the caffeine in green tea. Nature works in complex synergistic wholes, never with isolates. We are only beginning to discover the complex interaction of these micronutrients.

The deadly cocktail of sugars and trans fats is responsible for the many health challenges we face today. Our blood and blood flow suffer particularly because of their devastating effect on the liver, guts, kidneys and heart. No wonder so many of our modern diseases affect exactly those organs.

About the author

Mike Donkers is an English teacher from the Netherlands who started taking care of his own health in October 2006 because doctors couldn’t help him. His interest in the connection between food and health has led to more in-depth research, particularly in the role sea minerals can have in the regeneration of cells. He is also a self-taught guitarist and singer. He is the songwriter and frontman of his own band, The Mellotones (www.nubluz.com).

The incidence of people with bowel troubles is on the rise in the western world. Though the afflictions bear several names, it is my belief that all of them are fungus based. Various species of candida, most notably candida albicans, are at the root of these problems. How do they enter into your system? Well, for the most part they’re already there. Like all natural fungi they serve a useful purpose and candida are therefore a natural part of your intestinal flora. Problems arise when these yeast fungi lead to overgrowth as a result of three different triggers: sugary foods, drugs and stress. Compare that to the western lifestyle and you can see why so many people have bowel problems today. It’s a wonder some people don’t have yeast overgrowth!

Yeast bacteria can also enter your system by eating molded bread or being exposed to molds at home or elsewhere. As soon as the environment is favorable to these bacteria they will immediately increase their numbers and colonize their living environment, starting with the intestines and then moving on to other parts of the body by developing spores and traveling through the bloodstream. Antibiotics and other ‘medicines’ are the worst

culprits. ‘Antibiotic’ means ‘anti-life’. Antibiotics are designed to kill any bacteria in their path and that includes friendly probiotic gut bacteria who, contrary to candida, are not resistant. Other promoters of yeast overgrowth include cortisone based hormonal drugs (including skin applications) and painkillers. Stress and sugary foods are also detrimental to probiotic gut bacteria.

This clears the path for yeast colonization. They seem to favor mucus membranes particularly and will damage them wherever they decide to settle. They can damage the mucosal lining of the gastrointestinal tract by making it porous. As a result, food particles can enter the bloodstream undigested and cause toxic and allergic reactions. This is known as a “leaky gut”. Candida fungi can also slip through these pores and enter the bloodstream. By dwelling in various other parts of the body they can then cause allergic symptoms in the weirdest places. Hence fungal toenails, thrush, sinusitis, etc. They are very clever and adaptable and the more they spread and grow in number, the more they will inhibit the immune system; causing anything from chronic nose-colds, flus and hay fever to psoriasis, hypoglycemia, arthritis, diabetes and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, even depression. Candida thrive on sugary foods and by eating and drinking them people will actually feed the candida. People developing various allergic symptoms will rarely trace back these symptoms to their foods and lifestyle, however.

Fatal and Vital Foods For Dealing With Candida

Sugars

Bad foods can either cause a fungal problem or help exacerbate it, or both. Good foods, on the other hand, can help cure fungal overgrowth. So what’s good and what’s bad? Candida love a sweet environment. Thus all sugars are bad. Dietitians will often say only fast sugars are bad and slow sugars are good. Thus they will advise against white sugar and white flour and will advocate the use of raw cane sugar and whole-grain products. Sorry if you’re a sweet tooth and “carboholic”, but all sugars are out if you really want to starve candida.

This means you will have to wean yourself off:

sugar, refined or unrefined;

natural sweeteners, other than stevia

grains, refined or unrefined;

starchy foods;

sweet fruits;

pasteurized milk products;

alcohol;

coffee.

You will be amazed at how many products contain sugar and/or grains. In fact, you will find that many so-called “health products” are also loaded with sugars and grains. Life will become a little bit more difficult when shopping for food items and you will have to learn to read the list of ingredients instead of the nutritional information. Forget calories and, whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of buying anything that is labeled “diet” or “light”, particularly if these products contain artificial sweeteners such as the very dangerous neurotoxin and carcinogen aspartame and other related additives such as sucralose (Splenda), which are all made in a lab instead of a kitchen. These include flavor enhancers such as MSG (mono sodium glutamate) and other neurotoxins. The supermarket is not the best place to get food items, so this is a good reason to buy organic and to do it from local farms, if you care about avoiding food additives, pesticides and growth hormones.

Although honey and maple and agave syrup can and have been proven very beneficial to people’s health they are a definite no-no if you have candida. The same is true for pineapple, bananas, papaya and other sweet fruits – even caffeine and alcohol in small amounts. The point is not to feed the candida any sugars, period. The only exception is stevia, which is a plant that is 300 times sweeter than sugar, yet it is perfectly healthy for you. You can buy it as a tincture with alcohol (not recommended), diluted in water, or in its pure form as a powder. I recommend getting the latter but be very careful when using it as it is extremely sweet. You can get stevia on the web, just Google for it.

Starchy foods are not necessarily bad for you either. Jacket potatoes are better than peeled ones. That is because you are refining the potato by removing the fiber (peel), leaving only the sugar (starch). Sweet potatoes and yams are very good foods indeed, but not if you have candida. Once again,

Unpasteurized, raw milk can be very beneficial to your guts and liver. It naturally contains all the probiotic bacteria present in yogurt. Why raw milk is banned and yogurt isn’t is beyond me. Think about it, dairy farmers are obliged to use pasteurized milk as a basis for yoghurt and then reintroduce the same bacteria they killed when they heated the milk to make the yogurt! Although commercially available yoghurt, including organic yoghurt, is all made from pasteurized milk it is still a product I highly recommend. The reintroduction of probiotic bacteria largely undoes the damage caused by pasteurization.

The reason why raw milk is better than pasteurized milk is not only because probiotic bacteria are destroyed in the heating process but also because the lactose in the milk is converted into beta-lactose as a result of pasteurization. Beta-lactose is a fast sugar and it is in fact this ingredient which gives people lactose allergies and intolerances and causes mucus buildup (a sign of candida). Pasteurization also impairs the digestion of a protein in milk called casein. In other words, give these people real milk and their allergies disappear!

Really interesting is green tea, which does contain caffeine but which is not

a fast sugar the way it is in coffee. It gets even better: although even slow sugars are bad for you when not taken in moderation, there’s a substance in green tea which “eats” excess glucose in your blood. This way you get all the health benefits from caffeine without the glucose elevating properties of caffeine in coffee.

As you can see, the truth is sometimes somewhere in the middle. Simple sugars are bad, complex sugars are not. Milk lactose is one such complex sugar. The sugars in, for example, cabbage and green leafy vegetables are all complex sugars, or polysaccharides. They are complex because chemically they consist of a longer chain than simple sugars. Basically, the shorter the chain the faster the sugar and the worse they are for your health. Some natural foods contain very long-chain sugars. These foods, interestingly enough, taste bitter! A good example of this is mushrooms such as reishi, shiitake and maitake, all of which are non-destructive and healing fungi. Which brings me to the next subject.

Fungi

Just like there are good sugars, there are also good fungi. Eating ordinary mushrooms is not a good idea if you have candida because you’re feeding it its own kind. There are, however, medicinal mushrooms which are actually a great idea to consume, either raw or as a tea or stock or even as a supplement. Asian cuisine, most notably Japanese cuisine, has a long history of eating and preparing medicinal mushrooms. Examples of these are shiitake, maitake and reishi. Bear in mind that the longer you cook these mushrooms the more you are converting the complex sugars into simple sugars (carbohydrates), just the way pasteurization changes the chemical structure of milk and other foods.

Eating blue cheeses is also not a good idea if you have candida. These fungi are introduced into the cheese and, though they are tasty, are harmful to your health if you have a fungal problem. In the same vein, Brie and Camembert are also out.

Yeast

Another aspect of the anti-candida diet is avoiding products containing yeast and yeast extract. This means you will once again have to learn to read the labels. Once more, you will be amazed to see how many products contain yeast extract. In fact, yeast extract is very often a hidden source of MSG!

Not all fermented products are bad for you. Naturally fermented products are in fact good for you because they contain wild yeast which makes its way into the product from the air and consists of natural probiotic bacteria which are also present in your guts. For that reason, even whole-grain yeast bread is bad for you because it contains baker’s yeast, but sourdough bread is good for you because it is naturally fermented bread and the yeast bacteria use the sugar from the starch as food. For the same reason, bio live yoghurt is good. In fact, any naturally fermented product, as long as it doesn’t contain alcohol, is permitted because these are natural probiotics. Sauerkraut is fine, for example.

Detoxing

Try the above no-sugar-no-grains-no-yeast-no-fungi diet for four weeks. You will find yourself going through a detoxification period which can last the whole four weeks or end after one or two weeks, depending on how much detoxing you have to do. The first week is the worst. You will feel absolutely miserable, have cravings for sweets and junk foods, experience moodiness, near-depression, everything is possible. This is because the candida are demanding their nutrition. You must be strong at this stage and not give in. You will also experience windiness of a very smelly kind, a sign of detoxification of the intestines. You may have a ‘brick-in-your-stomach’ feeling for some time, diarrhea, headaches, dizziness – even vomiting is possible. Do not despair, as there will be a turning point where you will increasingly start to feel better.

After the first four weeks, you can then slowly reintroduce healthy foods which were forbidden before such as honey, maple syrup, dark, unfiltered agave syrup (the lighter variety will still give you a sugar hit), corn, (sweet) potatoes, yams, and various sweet fruits back into your diet. Because of the detoxing you have done you will now get a pure, unbiased and more or less immediate reaction from your body. If the food feels good, continue eating it but don’t overdo it. If it feels bad, stop eating it straight away. It’s that simple.

These food choices are very easy on the liver and guts, which means they not only help battle candida, but they are also powerful immune boosters. They will help you lose weight as well as help maintain your natural weight, ward off diabetes, arthritis, viruses, parasitic and bacterial infections, and promote overall good health of skin, bones, tissue, cartilage, etc.

The great news is you don’t have to sacrifice a thing taste-wise. In fact, by freeing yourself from the sweet and salty carb-rich foods our toxic food environment provides us with you are making use of all four tastes nature has provided you with. Once you discover that whole, living foods give you more energy and need not cost more both money-wise and health-wise, you won’t be able to go back to potato chips, burgers, cookies and other empty junk foods. You will find that your appetite will go down and you will need less food to keep you going for a longer time. And even if you do end up spending more money on good-quality foods, my question to you is: which would your rather pay with, your wallet or your health?

About the author

Mike Donkers is an English teacher from the Netherlands who started taking care of his own health in October 2006 because doctors couldn’t help him. His interest in the connection between food and health has led to more in-depth research, particularly in the role sea minerals can have in the regeneration of cells. He is also a self-taught guitarist and singer. He is the songwriter and frontman of his own band, The Mellotones (www.nubluz.com).

A new study spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group found the toxic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in over 50 percent of the name-brand canned goods tested. In some cases, a single serving was enough to expose a woman or infant to BPA levels that were 200 times higher than the government’s safe level for industrial chemicals.

What you need to know –

• BPA is an industrially produced chemical commonly used in polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. BPA-containing resins are a common ingredient in the linings of canned goods.

effects, toxicity or even neurotoxicity, low sperm counts and cancer. Some of these effects can occur in concentrations as low as two parts per billion. More than 200 animal studies show that BPA is toxic at very low doses, and the Centers for Disease Control explains that it has found BPA in 95 percent of patients being tested at levels that raise health concerns.

• The study found that cans of chicken soup, infant formula and ravioli had the highest levels of BPA. One to three servings of these foods was enough to expose women or children to BPA levels that have been shown to cause harm in animal tests.

• One in 10 of the cans tested — and one in three cans of infant formula — contained concentrations high enough that a single serving contained levels less than five times lower than the dose shown to cause harm in animal studies. Typically, the government classifies exposure as dangerous if it is within 1,000 to 3,000 times that shown to harm animals.

• The FDA estimates that 17% of the U.S. diet comes from canned food, but there is no government safety standard regulating the amount of BPA allowed in such foods.

• Quote: “Given widespread human exposure to BPA and hundreds of studies showing its adverse effects, the FDA and EPA must act quickly to revise safe levels for BPA exposure based on the latest science on the low-dose toxicity of the chemical.” – Environmental Working Group

What you need to know – Alternative View

• It is worth noting that bisphenol-A is only found in processed, manufactured foods and packaging. Consuming fresh, raw produce avoids the ingestion of bisphenol-A.

• Food packaging that has long been considered “safe” by the FDA is now being found to be surprisingly hazardous to human health. As a general rule, the more fresh food you eat and the less processed, packaging food you eat, the lower your risk will be for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurological disorders and many other diseases.

Your food can build a protective shield around your body or create an opening for the entrance of the dreaded cancer disease into your system.

So what are those dangerous consumables that invite cancer into your system?

• Refined and processed sugar

• Swordfish, Tuna and Shark – these are a major source of methyl mercury, a carcinogen that can even cause neurological damage to unborn babies and pregnant women.

• Conventional Meat fed with hormones; these include agric poultry and meat that are treated with estrogen to make them grow faster. Estrogen can contribute to ovarian, breast, cervical and prostate cancer.

Lean meat—if you must eat meat, settle for leaner meat, such as fish, chicken, or turkey.

Unsaturated fats—these come from plant sources and are liquid at room temperature. Primary sources include olive oil, canola oil, nuts, and avocados. Also focus on omega-3 fatty acids, which fight inflammation and support brain and heart health. Good sources include salmon, tuna, and flaxseeds.

Antioxidants—these are powerful vitamins found in fruits and vegetables. They include antioxidants such as beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, and selenium.

Eat a wide range of brightly coloured fruits and vegetables. Colourful fruits and vegetables are rich in phytochemicals, a potent disease–fighting and immune–boosting nutrient. The greater the variety of colours that you include, the more you will benefit.

Water—Water stimulates the immune system, removes waste and toxins, and transports nutrients to all your organs.